The Autobiography of Charles Darwin | Page 7

a
rather earlier age than usual, and sent me (Oct. 1825) to Edinburgh
University with my brother, where I stayed for two years or sessions.
My brother was completing his medical studies, though I do not believe
he ever really intended to practise, and I was sent there to commence
them. But soon after this period I became convinced from various small
circumstances that my father would leave me property enough to
subsist on with some comfort, though I never imagined that I should be
so rich a man as I am; but my belief was sufficient to check any
strenuous efforts to learn medicine.
The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were

intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry by Hope; but
to my mind there are no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures
compared with reading. Dr. Duncan's lectures on Materia Medica at 8
o'clock on a winter's morning are something fearful to remember. Dr.--
made his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he was himself, and the
subject disgusted me. It has proved one of the greatest evils in my life
that I was not urged to practise dissection, for I should soon have got
over my disgust; and the practice would have been invaluable for all
my future work. This has been an irremediable evil, as well as my
incapacity to draw. I also attended regularly the clinical wards in the
hospital. Some of the cases distressed me a good deal, and I still have
vivid pictures before me of some of them; but I was not so foolish as to
allow this to lessen my attendance. I cannot understand why this part of
my medical course did not interest me in a greater degree; for during
the summer before coming to Edinburgh I began attending some of the
poor people, chiefly children and women in Shrewsbury: I wrote down
as full an account as I could of the case with all the symptoms, and read
them aloud to my father, who suggested further inquiries and advised
me what medicines to give, which I made up myself. At one time I had
at least a dozen patients, and I felt a keen interest in the work. My
father, who was by far the best judge of character whom I ever knew,
declared that I should make a successful physician,--meaning by this
one who would get many patients. He maintained that the chief element
of success was exciting confidence; but what he saw in me which
convinced him that I should create confidence I know not. I also
attended on two occasions the operating theatre in the hospital at
Edinburgh, and saw two very bad operations, one on a child, but I
rushed away before they were completed. Nor did I ever attend again,
for hardly any inducement would have been strong enough to make me
do so; this being long before the blessed days of chloroform. The two
cases fairly haunted me for many a long year.
My brother stayed only one year at the University, so that during the
second year I was left to my own resources; and this was an advantage,
for I became well acquainted with several young men fond of natural
science. One of these was Ainsworth, who afterwards published his
travels in Assyria; he was a Wernerian geologist, and knew a little
about many subjects. Dr. Coldstream was a very different young man,

prim, formal, highly religious, and most kind-hearted; he afterwards
published some good zoological articles. A third young man was
Hardie, who would, I think, have made a good botanist, but died early
in India. Lastly, Dr. Grant, my senior by several years, but how I
became acquainted with him I cannot remember; he published some
first- rate zoological papers, but after coming to London as Professor in
University College, he did nothing more in science, a fact which has
always been inexplicable to me. I knew him well; he was dry and
formal in manner, with much enthusiasm beneath this outer crust. He
one day, when we were walking together, burst forth in high admiration
of Lamarck and his views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment,
and as far as I can judge without any effect on my mind. I had
previously read the 'Zoonomia' of my grandfather, in which similar
views are maintained, but without producing any effect on me.
Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such
views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them
under a different form in my 'Origin of Species.' At this time I admired
greatly the 'Zoonomia;' but on reading it a second time after an interval
of ten or fifteen years, I was much disappointed; the proportion of